VISUAL ARTIST

A 16th CENTURY BOOK AT SOAS

The subject of this study isa 'Divan' or collection of poems by 'Abd al-Rahman Jami in the collection of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, MS. 25293. Dated 941 AH (1534 - 34), it is thought to have been produced in Herat at the court of the Safavid Prince Bahram Mirza.

For this study I focussed on the illuminated opening pages ff. 1v-2r, because I wanted to understand how a 16th century master illuminator might have approached his work. The methods I used were:

A visual analysis of the condition of the pages

Measuring the rulings

Analysing the structure of the design

Reading contemporary technical literature

Sourcing materials and tools to make a reconstruction of the design

Re-creating sections of the design

Documenting the process

For a more detailed account of this study, please see the PDF to the left.